I’ve been calling for the United States to prosecute Snowden from the day news broke about his NSA theft. Commentaries like “Complaints about NSA Spying Are Schizophrenic … and Misguided,” June 8, 2013, “I Spy, You Spy, We All Spy,” July 2, 2013, and “From Spycraft to Stagecraft, Snowden Debuts as Putin’s Useful Idiot,” April 22, 2014, attest to this.
Unfortunately, I’ve been suffering the slings and arrows of online trolls since my first commentary damning him to … jail.
This is why I felt somewhat vindicated last week after Congress released a report damning him as a traitor who should be prosecuted. I duly hailed it in “Congress: Snowden’s a Liar and a Traitor Who Should Never Be Pardoned,” September 16, 2016.
Alas, Congress has become so utterly bereft of credibility and respect, Snowden’s liberal advocates scoffed at my presumed vindication. One indignant reader even said I should be ashamed for feeling vindicated by a Republican-controlled Congress that seems hell-bent on turning America into a gun-crazy police state; his oxymoronic proposition notwithstanding.
To be fair, I had already felt somewhat vindicated last year after notable public figures – like former CIA Director and Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Microsoft Founder Bill Gates – echoed my call for Snowden to be prosecuted.
But I finally have just cause to feel entirely vindicated. Because less than 24 hours after Congress released its report, the Washington Post published an equally damning editorial (on September 17).
It, of course, is the paper of record for Western liberals; so much so that a liberal scoffing at a Post editorial is akin to an Evangelical scoffing at a Bible verse. Its Editorial Board acknowledged the role Snowden played in reforming the government’s practice of mass electronic surveillance, but insisted that:
Whether Mr. Snowden deserves a presidential pardon, as human rights organizations are demanding in a new national campaign timed to coincide with the film, is a complicated question, however, to which President Obama’s answer should continue to be ‘no’…
He also pilfered, and leaked, information about a separate overseas NSA Internet-monitoring program, PRISM, that was both clearly legal and not clearly threatening to privacy… Worse — far worse — he also leaked details of basically defensible international intelligence operations: cooperation with Scandinavian services against Russia; spying on the wife of an Osama bin Laden associate; and certain offensive cyber operations in China.
Incidentally, the film the Post refers to is an eponymously titled paean to Snowden directed by conspiracy nut Oliver Stone.
The Board goes on, but you get the idea. I would only add that I’m on record decrying the chilling effect the Snowden-imposed NSA reforms have wrought and the damage his leaks have caused. I refer you to “NSA Reform: From the Frying Pan into the Fire?” June 4, 2015, and “More Evidence Snowden Leaks Undermining Global Security,” June 16, 2015.
Meanwhile, Snowden’s advocates doggedly refuse to acknowledge the unpardonable hypocrisy inherent in him fleeing to a veritable police state like Russia. They’re the ones who produced his video pleading for Obama to pardon him.
Except that, in it, Snowden looks like a cross between an ISIS hostage pleading for his life and a cyber thief grappling with consciousness of guilt … and leaker’s remorse. But their self-righteousness is such that the irony of this video, as well as that of his place of refuge, seems completely lost on both Snowden and his advocates.
I warned — in “I Said Putin Would Hand Snowden Over. I Was Wrong,” October 25, 2013 — that Snowden would suffer this fate. Not least because it is the same fate other useful idiots suffered after betraying their country and seeking refuge in Russia. Which is why I was hardly surprised when his initial pleas gave me reason to write “Snowden Wants In from the Cold,” March 4, 2015.
In any event, the Post’s call for Obama to reject his plea for a presidential pardon means that Snowden will either spend the rest of his life withering away in the cold in Russia or rotting away in jail in America. But I can think of nobody more deserving of such a Hobson’s choice.
Related commentaries:
Congress…
We all spy…
Complaints about NSA…
Spycraft to stagecraft…
NSA reform…
Snowden wants in…